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Originally posted by pianoloverus: Ninrod is an interesting example. I played Grainger's transcription and would agree with your thoughts about this piece.
Reportedly, the only Elgar that Grainger liked. So he was one up on Sir Thomas Beecham presumably.
Originally posted by Danny Niklas: The minor key has the third and sixth degree of the scale flattened. The minor third and sixth have a more complex vibration ratio. For example the octave of a root has twice the number of vibrations. This means a ratio of 2:1 which is not complex, hence harmonious and indeed the octave sounds harmonious to our ears.
The fifth also is a non-complex ratio of 3:2 and is indeed very harmonious and found in every musical system on the world including tribal ones.
Now consider the augmented fourth with its incredibly complex ratio of 45:32. How does it sound to you? Stable, clear, happy or misterious, suspended, weird?
The minor key is simply the combination of more complex ratios and therefore less harmonious and immediate to our ears. If you consider what is harmonious in nature and how it tends to express safety, joy and happiness and what is non-harmonious and how it tends to express doubt, vertigo, melancholy even horror you can understand how a more complex sequence of vibration can convey more complex and ambigous feelings than a more simple and harmonious one.
The more complex the ratio the more dissonant and strange the sound. That's why for example the tritone was considered the "sound of demon" and is employed in a lot of horror music. As ratio complexity increases you have noises. Noises indeed are non harmonious sounds and we responds generally with panic and fear to them. Rightly so, that's how we learn that rumbling of rocks, explosions of vulcanos, falling of trees are all signals of dangers and why the harmonic voice of a mother, worlwide, is a signal of safeness and protection. On the other hand the chirping of birds is an harmonious sound.
Even babies without any cultural conditioning responds to the sadness of minor keys, happiness of major keys, pleasure of consonances, disturbingness of dissonances and relief of dissonance resolving into consonances. Actually even plants respond to it!
Can you think of some works in major keys that sound sad or works in minor keys that sound happy? I think there are some, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. I am talking about pieces tha stay in(or at least are predominantly in) minor or major keys, not ones that start in major and switch to minor.
Most of the variations in the multitude of variation sets on that famous theme by Paganini seem at least fairly high-spirited to me, if that counts as "happy". Oddly, when Rachmaninoff shifts to the major for his touching slow variation, the result is, if not exactly sad, at least wistful.
Speaking of a minor, some of Bach's writing in that key seems pretty perky to me, even comic (e.g., the a minor fugue in WTC II).
Originally posted by Rick: How about the Scriabin etude in D-sharp minor (op8, no12)? That piece is nothing if not triumphant, although I'm not sure if it stays in minor all the way through. I don't think anyone could call it sad? or could they?
I would call it dramatic which I've added to my list in my OP of minor key characteristics. It does switch to major in the middle.
If you want to answer the question, why major sounds happy and minor sounds sad, there is the problem, that some minor chords don't sound sad. The solution of this problem is the Strebetendenz-Theory. It says, that music is not able to transmit emotions directly. Music can just convey processes of will, but the music listener fills this processes of will with emotions. Similary, when you watch a dramatic film in television, the film cannot transmit emotions directly, but processes of will. The spectator perceives the processes of will dyed with emotions - identifying with the protagonist. When you listen music you identify too, but with an anonymous will now.
If you perceive a major chord, you normally identify with the will "Yes, I want to...". If you perceive a minor chord, you identify normally with the will "I don't want anymore...". If you play the minor chord softly, you connect the will "I don't want anymore..." with a feeling of sadness. If you play the minor chord loudly, you connect the same will with a feeling of rage. You distinguish in the same way as you would distinguish, if someone would say the words "I don't want anymore..." the first time softly and the second time loudly.
This operations of will in the music were unknown until the Strebetendenz-Theory discovered them. And therefore many previous researches in psycholgy of music failed. If you want more information about music and emotions and get the answer, why music touches us emotionally, you can download the essay "Vibrating Molecules and the Secret of their Feelings" for free. You can get it on the link: http://www.willimekmusic.homepage.t-online.de/homepage/Striving/Striving.doc
One minor-key piece I've never been able to quite figure out is the Mozart C minor Concerto, specifically the third movement theme and variations. What kind of a mood is he going for here? The theme sounds almost dopey, lurching and heaving around. It's really catchy, but I'm not sure I actually understand it.
I think the association with emotions is all learned. And that this might be related to the way of composing and playing minor : slower, more introspective, more varied, more dramatic. And that in turn is probably because minor offers more possibilities, with its melodic, harmonic and natural minor variants.
However many folk dance tunes are in minor or something sounding like minor yet they are very happy.
just a few quick examples I found on youtube, probably there are much better picks.
This is pure speculation, but I'm wondering if major thirds and major sixths are easier to sing because of the frequencies so there's stronger subconscious associations with the human voice and celebration and comfort and the things we have traditionally used music for from an anthropological perspective. I thought of this because I am reading "The Study of Counterpoint" by Fux and in the last chapter that I read he talks about how an augmented fourth interval is outlawed in counterpoint because it is difficult to sing and sounds "unnatural."
I think there's definitely a strong emotional character to different modes. There's a reason the G major gigue from French Suite 5 by Bach sounds like pure joy. In Art of Piano, Neuhaus even went so far as to say that he feels like each of the keys have a distinctive character and that for him A flat major is uniquely joyful. I hadn't heard of the idea before outside of it being parodied in the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" when Nigel Tufnel is talking about the Mozart and Bach "Mach" piece he wrote in A minor, "the saddest of all keys."
I remember reading (can't recall where, unfortunately) about a study that tracked the pitch patterns in people's speaking voices, finding that happy and excited people tended to have major third and perfect fifth patterns in their voice, while gloomy and frightened people tended to have minor thirds and minor seconds. If that's true, it would be a sensible explanation why we associate keys that emphasize different intervals with different emotions.
I hadn't heard of the idea before outside of it being parodied in the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" when Nigel Tufnel is talking about the Mozart and Bach "Mach" piece he wrote in A minor, "the saddest of all keys."
While there are plenty of sad major key pieces (and vice-versa), the fact remains that if you ask most people to compare a major triad with a minor triad, they will say that the major chord sounds "happier" and the minor chord "sadder".
Last week I was just talking to a scientist who studies music and the brain, who confirmed for me that this phenomenon is universal, including among tribes in New Guinea with very little Western contact.
The fact that a half step difference in one note produces a universally acknowledged emotional association remains a deep mystery to me.
Last week I was just talking to a scientist who studies music and the brain, who confirmed for me that this phenomenon is universal, including among tribes in New Guinea with very little Western contact.
As I said earlier in this (old) thread, I'd be very interested to see the actual research methodology which shows this to be so. When you consider that even in the history of western music over the last 1000 years this does not seem to have been universally so, I would be very surprised if it were so for all cultures everywhere, at all times.
When you consider that even in the history of western music over the last 1000 years this does not seem to have been universally so...
This statement seems to be talking about full pieces and their overall emotional content. For what it's worth, I'm talking about a much simpler phenomenon: describing a single major or minor triad, out of context.
I wonder if it could have to do with the fact that a major third is the fifth partial of the overtone series whereas a minor third is the nineteenth? Thus, a major third 'feels' more harmonious, and we feel resolution. A minor third on the other hand, being much more distant, feels less resolute.
I hadn't heard of the idea before outside of it being parodied in the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" when Nigel Tufnel is talking about the Mozart and Bach "Mach" piece he wrote in A minor, "the saddest of all keys."
D minor, not A minor.
(source: memory. )
-J
Haha, thanks. Wouldn't want to mix up the saddest of all the keys.
I hadn't heard of the idea before outside of it being parodied in the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" when Nigel Tufnel is talking about the Mozart and Bach "Mach" piece he wrote in A minor, "the saddest of all keys."
D minor, not A minor.
(source: memory. )
-J
Haha, thanks. Wouldn't want to mix up the saddest of all the keys.
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